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Monday, August 18, 2008

The Best Books You Didn't Read this Week, Issue 4

Golly! #1Written by: Phil HesterArt by: Brook Turner

Several years ago there was a television show on HBO that caught my attention and held me rapt for two seasons before it was ultimately and untimely canceled. The show was called "Carnivàle " and it introduced the concept of magic into the time of the Great Depression. It was a truly brilliant show and if you are looking for something really great to add to your DVD collection I highly recommend that you head out to a Best Buy or something akin and get the two box sets that comprise the entire series. It was brilliantly dark, had such a great dramatic flair, and featured the unique language of the 1930's combined with the even more unique nomenclature of Carnival folk that it instantly became one of my favorites (the creators of this show, Charlie and Daniel Knauf now work at Marvel comics and part of me hopes that someday they might finish their story in the pages of comics). Phil Hester must have watched this show. And he decided that there was a place for this kind of story in the world of comics and what he came up with was "Golly!". The main character is Golly Munhollen, a carnival ride repair man/race-car driver at the carnival's demolition derby/dirt track race. He has just been chosen by God's angelic representative to be a force for good on earth. Apparently due to lack of interest on either side of the afterlife have lost interest in having an apocalypse altogether and while it has been agreed upon by the forces that be that many of the agents of hell who have already come to earth in order to enact their own machinations of something to do as we draw towards the end times ... sadly their plans are about to come to a stop. Golly is surrounded by a weird cast of characters and it is totally awesome and incredibly hilarious, I highly recommend that anyone who wants to laugh check this book out and anyone who was a fan of Carnivàle or Preacher check out this awesome little book.

Once Heroes went live on television it became a certainty in my mind that more and more of the creators of the show would eventually start working in the world of comics. Some have shown promise others have yet to make their voices known. Joe Pokaski is a writer and Executive Story Editor on Heroes and is very close friends with fellow writers Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander and now can add to his writing resume, Comics Writer. I have always had sort of an odd fascination with the Inhumans, it all started with the Paul Jenkins penned series with art by the absolutely brilliant Jae Lee. It continued in the pages of Sean McKeever and Matt Clark series that debuted under the Marvel Tsunami imprint. Now the time has come for the creatures created by the technology of the Kree to take part in the war between Earth and the Skrulls. When, in the pages of New Avengers: Illuminati #5, Black Bolt was revealed to be a Skrull it was certain that it was only a brief amount of time before the rest of the Inhumans would become involved, and now that time has come. Understandably they have all become wary of their fellow Inhumans and a sort of martial law has been declared in their city on the moon and once again a tie-in has much more action than the pages of the actual Secret Invasion mini-series event. All in all I would recommend this issue to people who are fans of the Inhumans but think that ultimately there isn't much reason for the story aside from a chance to see how the often unlit corner of the Marvel Universe is reacting to the "universe-wide" event.

I have already written a rather in depth review of the first trade paper back from this series and I have to say that I was hugely excited to see this series return, anything I say here would just, ultimately be repeating what I said I loved about the previous mini-series so instead I will just link you to the previous review, click Here